Newport Pagnell is not a port nor is it new, and the Paganels who gave it the second half of its name have been extinct so many centuries that there are not even any monuments of them left in the church. There is indeed nothing feudal in the appearance of the little town, and the very site of the great Norman castle built by Fulke Paganel is obscure.

It is a little, lop-sided town, calm and cleanly, with houses, stone-built and brick, chiefly of Queen Annean and Georgian dates, situated on the river Ouse. To enter the town, you cross over that not very broad river by an iron bridge, built in 1810; and there you obtain the prettiest view in all Newport. Immediately across the bridge is “Queen Anne’s,” or St. John’s Hospital, looking very new, for it has recently been rebuilt. One of its many rebuildings was that by Queen Anne, in 1615: not the Queen Anne who (as the saying goes) is dead, but another Queen Anne who is, if possible, even more dead: the Anne of Denmark, who was Queen of James the First. Even the hospitallers who are still advantaged by her re-founding of the ancient almshouse are in a state of benighted ignorance as to her identity: they either suppose her to be the Anne, Queen Regnant, whom we all know; or else frankly say they “dunno nawthin’ about who she wor,” and might with equal truth add that they don’t care.

Almost all that remains of the old building is a tablet, with inscription very difficult to be read, and weirdly misspelled, imploring:

1615.

Newport Pagnell has already been referred to as “lop-sided,” a phenomenon occasioned by the railway station at the western end of the town. It is not a large station, and it is only the terminus of a short branch from Wolverton, but it has caused the little building that has taken place in Newport in the last sixty years to be done almost exclusively here. Near by, in a house called “The Green,” there once lived an eccentric medical man, a Dr. Patrick Renny, who was born in 1734, and died here in 1805; being buried, by the terms of his will, in the garden, where an obelisk over his grave—now entirely overgrown with ivy, and looking like an ancient tree—may still be seen.

In leaving Newport Pagnell, we may depart in imaginary company with John Wesley, who was riding horseback this way to Northampton on May 21st, 1742, when he overtook one who eventually proved to be a Calvinist, “a serious man with whom I immediately fell into conversation. He presently gave me to know what his opinions were, therefore I said nothing to contradict them. He was quite uneasy to know ‘whether I held the doctrines of the decrees as he did’; but I told him over and over ‘We had better keep to practical things, lest we should be angry with one another.’ And so we did for two miles, till he caught me unawares and dragged me into the dispute before I knew where I was. He then grew warmer and warmer; told me I was rotten at heart, and supposed I was one of John Wesley’s followers. I told him ‘No, I am John Wesley himself.’ Upon which he would gladly have run away outright. But being the better mounted of the two, I kept close to his side and endeavoured to show him his heart till we came into the street of Northampton.”

Let us hope that Calvinist was duly convinced of error.

To the north, on our road to Northampton, Newport has grown not at all: for reasons sufficient to the observation of all who pass this way: the river Ouse and its adjacent wet meadows, over which the road is taken on a bridge and a causeway, forbidding, even if the parish boundary did not.

Here is Lathbury, whose church and few houses are to be sought off the road by turning to the left at a point where a formal red brick mansion, formerly “Lathbury Inn,” stands. There was some little trouble here in 1745, when Mrs. Symes, of Lathbury Park, an ardent Jacobite, refused the Duke of Cumberland and his army a passage through her estate: with the result (as she did not possess an army of her own) that they passed through, riotously and destructively, instead of decently and in good order.

The little church of Lathbury is a singularly beautiful village church, with oddly diminishing tower walls. The interior, Norman and Early English, still preserves abundant traces of frescoes of Renaissance character, with texts and the beautiful Lord’s Prayer. A small brass, dated 1661, to one Davies, son of a former rector, is placed here, according to the inscription, so that other “Cambria-Brittaines,” passing, should see it. “Cambria-Brittaine” appears to be seventeenth-century pedant’s language for “Welshman.”

The stable-clocks of Gayhurst and Tyringham chiming from either side of the road advertise the whereabouts of those places, effectively hidden though they be in summer by wayside foliage, save for a glimpse here and there. The historic manor-house of Gayhurst might readily be missed, were it not for the lodge-gates; and that would be a loss indeed, for the place is historic in very dramatic sort. The present house dates back in its oldest portions to 1500, when an Early Renaissance mansion was erected by the Nevill family, who ended in an heiress whose marriage brought the estate into the family of Mulso. It was Thomas Mulso who in the time of Queen Elizabeth remodelled the house, and, like many another loyal gentleman of that age, gave it a ground-plan representing the letter E, in compliment to his sovereign: the end limbs of the E being represented by the wings, and the middle limb by the projecting porch. Soon again, however, for lack of heirs male, Gayhurst changed hands, when Mary Mulso married the handsome young Catholic gentleman, Sir Everard Digby, in 1596. The old hiding-places, secret chambers, and uncomfortable quarters in the chimney-flues, with which the house had been thoughtfully provided, were found very useful in the rash young Sir Everard’s time, for he was one of the participants in the Gunpowder Plot, and entertained his fellow-plotters here. Realising the risks he ran, he made over Gayhurst by deed of gift to his son, Kenelm, then but twelve months old. Thus, by early application of the Heaven-sent limited-liability principle, he preserved the estate from the otherwise inevitable confiscation that awaited unsuccessful treason; and went to the scaffold in January 1606, easy on that head. And so, in due course, Sir Kenelm came to his own, and although he endured persecutions and whips and scorns under the Commonwealth, was not altogether unhappy.

The large edible snails he introduced from the South of France, in the hope of curing his consumptive wife, Venetia, still have their descendants in the woods here: the woods that represent those early boskages whence Gayhurst obtained its original name of Goddeshurst, which gradually, by way of “Gotehurst”, i.e. “God’s Wood”, and “Gothurst”, has become what it is now.

The Digbys ended in two unmarried sisters, who in 1704 sold their ancestral home to Sir Nathan Wrighte, Queen Anne’s Keeper of the Seals, whose monumental effigy, gorgeously robed, lies in the classic church hard by the house; and the Wrightes themselves parted with it in 1830.

Beside historic associations, Gayhurst has literary memories, for this is the poet Cowper’s country, and he often visited the Mr. Wrighte of that age, travelling from Olney, little more than four miles away, to admire the gardens, the hot-houses, and “the orange-trees, the most captivating creatures of the kind I ever saw.” But he does not enlarge upon the interesting Early Renaissance architecture of the older part of the house, which is very justly admired nowadays. The Queen Anne additions, comparatively recent as they were in his time, were better thought of, and the classic church considered exquisite. It was one of Sir Christopher Wren’s last designs, but the great architect never saw it built, for he died, aged ninety-two, in 1723, and it was not begun until the following year.

The Ouse, glinting steel-blue amid the green meadows, is seen away to the right of the road, on the way to Eakley Lane, winding placidly and sluggishly along. It is, of course, Cowper’s Ouse:

Passing through the village of Stoke Goldington, where the golden-brown stone of Northamptonshire—the “sugar-stone,” as it is locally styled—is first noticed in the buildings, Inckley, or Eakley Lane is reached. “Eakley,” which appears to derive from “Ea” = water, and “lea” = a meadow, referring to the neighbouring water-meadows of the Ouse, is the proper name, but the spot was known indifferently by either spelling in coaching days, when it was notable for two inns, the “Bull’s Head” and the “George and Dragon.” Both houses are still in existence, but have long since ceased to be inns.

Old houses that were once inns are indeed remarkably plentiful in these next few miles. At Horton there stands what was formerly “Horton Inn,” now a handsome country residence. Obviously it was built in two separate periods; beginning business in a modest way and then enlarged to twice its original size. Doubtless further enlargements and improvements were in contemplation when the era of railways came in and doomed all such hopes to failure. A spacious drive once led up to the house, but that was long ago walled in and converted into a garden.

Here we come into Northamptonshire, uphill, into the region that was once known as Salcey Forest, which, with the Forest of Rockingham to the east and that of Whittlebury on the west, was in the days of the Plantagenet kings a portion of a vast chase, in which the red deer were of far more account than men.

Northamptonshire, which takes its name from Northampton, the county town (itself originally merely “Hampton,” and afterwards styled “North Hampton” for the express purpose of distinguishing it from Southampton), is an undulating shire of what Horace Walpole was pleased to style, rather aptly, “dumpling hills.” It is rich in building-stone of various kinds, largely of that beautiful golden-russet ferruginous sandstone, already referred to as “sugar-stone”; hence the fine substantial character of local buildings. Brick is not introduced largely into the architecture of its towns and villages.

Fuller, who was a native of this shire, writing of it two hundred and fifty years ago, said there was as little waste ground here as in any county of England, and compared Northamptonshire with “an apple without core to be cut out, or rind to be pared away.” His praise was not extravagant, for the country contains little or nothing in the way of bleak heath or barren moor.

This “shire of squires and spires” is also in old folk-rhyme that of “spinsters and springs,” and of “pride, poverty, and puddings,” ascriptions not readily to be understood, unless they be merely examples of a rustic passion for alliteration reduced to an absurdity; for spinsters abound in other shires, and no one surely would seriously contend that Northamptonshire was favoured above the ordinary in the matter of springs, conceit, pauperism, and puddings. But the spires are, at any rate, an indubitable and a beautiful architectural fact.

Passing through Horton, we make a first acquaintance with them at Piddington, a village of the smallest dimensions with a church of the largest. Both are situated a few hundred yards off the road, the Early English church spire peaking up magnificently among the trees, with a peculiar richness of outline. Restoration recently in progress with the particularly vivid yellow-brown stone from the Duston quarries, two miles from Northampton, makes the restored patches stand out with glaring offensiveness; but Time will remedy that—as all other ills.

Hackleton, a large but rather characterless place, quickly follows upon Horton and Piddington, and is the last village before reaching Northampton, five miles away. Its position, the next place out of the town on the road to London, made it, in the days before railways a very special halting-place for drovers and the humbler wayfarers, and its inns were many. Superior to the rest was the “New Inn,” now a private residence, but for long years after it had retired from trade bearing on its front the legend “Wines and Spirits: Entertainment for Man and Beast”; with the not unnatural result that the privacy of the occupants was frequently invaded by seekers after that entertainment.

Little more than one mile from Northampton town, near by the junction of the road to Stony Stratford, where the highway assumes a magnificent breadth, stands on a grassy bank the finest of the famous Eleanor Crosses, raised by Edward the First to the memory of his Queen, Eleanor of Castile, who died of a lingering fever at Harby, in Nottinghamshire, November 28th, 1290. It is placed in a solitary position, on a grassy selvedge of the road, at a spot in the parish of Hardingstone, close by the grounds of what was once the Abbey of DelaprÉ, or De Pratis, the Abbey of the Meadows, founded for an establishment of Cluniac nuns by Simon of Senlis, the crusading Earl of Northampton, in the late Norman period.

The dearly loved Queen of Edward the First died in what was then the remote district of Sherwood Forest, but the King decided that her body should rest at Westminster Abbey, and so, with impressive deliberation, the long journey was made.

Although travelling was a slow and tedious process in those days, it was not necessarily so slow as this lengthy funeral procession. On December 4th, the body of the Queen having been previously removed from Harby to Lincoln Cathedral, the solemn pageant set out for Westminster, but did not reach London until eleven days later, and the entombment did not take place in the Abbey until the 17th of the month. The reasons for the length of time taken are twofold, and are to be found in the pompous circumstances under which the journey was taken, and in the circuitous route chosen. The usual route was by way of Stamford and Huntingdon, and so by Royston and Cheshunt, but it was intended that the procession should pass through a more frequented line of country and districts where the Queen had been better known. Another object was to take some of the greater religious houses on the way, and thus have suitably dignified places where to rest at the close of every day. The route chosen was, therefore, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, West Cheap, and Charing.

The greatest magnificence marked the occasion, and twelve memorial crosses, of different design, were afterwards erected on the places where the bier had rested. Charity was given and masses paid for, and here at Hardingstone, close by the Abbey of DelaprÉ, in whose chapel the body of the Queen rested for the night, this most beautiful of the three remaining crosses was erected. “Living, I loved her dearly,” the King wrote to the Abbot of Cluny, “and dead I shall never cease to love her”; and so with every care the great officers of State who accompanied the procession were directed to mark with particular care those resting-places the King thought sacred, so that no doubt might arise as to the exact spot where these memorials should be built.

The detailed accounts of the cost of these crosses exist to this day in the Record Office, where, inscribed in crabbed Latin on parchment rolls, they may be readily seen, if not so readily deciphered. From them may be gathered the names of the masons and the sculptors engaged: John de Bello being the chief architect of the crosses at Hardingstone, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, and St. Albans; and “Alexander le Imaginator,” otherwise Alexander of Abingdon, and William of Ireland the chief sculptors of the statues. Master Richard de Crundale was principal “cementarius,” or master-mason.

A very special care that the Cross should be frequented is to be observed in the remains of the stone-flagged pathway from Northampton, constructed at the time when the Cross was built, for the purpose of ensuring an easy journey to the spot, where the devout might pray for the soul of the departed Queen. The cost of this is set down in the accounts in payments of forty and sixty marks.

In spite of the weathering of over six hundred years, and the mischief wrought by thoughtless people, the Cross is still a finely preserved work, and the graceful statues of the Queen under their protecting canopies in the upper stage are yet beautiful. But more than shoulder-high, the initials of the obscure, carved numerously in the stone, bear witness to that passion for remembrance that belongs to all classes, and has written itself deeply on venerable monuments such as this, in tree-trunks, on the margins of books, on walls, and on window-panes innumerable.

Many restoring hands, and others that can scarcely be so described, have been laid upon “Queen’s Cross,” as it is locally styled. In the reign of Queen Anne, a good deal was done, and was complacently alluded to in a long Latin inscription on a huge tablet which, together with the Royal Arms, was actually affixed to the Cross, in company with a sundial on each of the eight sides. We may judge of the self-sufficient spirit of those “restorers” in this English version of the inscription: “For the perpetual commemoration of conjugal affection, the honourable Assembly of Magistrates, or Justices, of the County of Northampton, resolved to restore this monument to Queen Eleanor, nearly falling into ruins by reason of age, in that most auspicious year 1713, in which Anne, the glory of her mighty Britain, the most powerful avenger of the oppressed, the arbitress of peace and war, after that Germany had been set free, Belgium made secure by garrisons, the French overthrown in more than ten battles, by her own, and by the arms of her allies, made an end of conquering, and restored peace to Europe, after she had given it freedom.”

Dear me!

A charming afterthought, showing that the justices could descend from Imperial heights to domestic levels, was the placing of a pair of stocks at the base.

In 1762 it was thought necessary to have another shy at the venerable relic, and evidence long remained of it, in another tablet, with the words, “Again repaired and restored in the second year of King George the Third, and of our Lord 1762.” The combination of loyalty and piety is rich indeed.

Again, in 1832 a restoration was effected, at a cost of £300. Happily, no more tablets were affixed, and more happily still, the existing ones were removed. Further, in 1884, the restorations of earlier years were re-restored at a cost of £320. The shattered cross crowning the structure, destroyed at some remote period, has never been replaced.